Evaluating energy efficiency of ONUs having multiple power levels in TDM-PONs

A TDM Passive Optical Network (TDM-PON) proposes the use of sleep modes for Optical Network Units (ONUs) to maximize Energy Efficiency (EE). When an ONU manages a sleep mode, it needs to turn on and off some of its components based on communication requirements. Hence, an ONU ends up with multiple power levels. Existing analytical models for evaluating EE consider that an ONU has only two power levels. However, we have found in some literature where an ONU can have more than two power levels. In this letter we propose an analytical model to quantify the EE of an ONU having more than two power levels. We demonstrate the accuracy of the model by means of simulation under two different sleep interval deciding algorithms.